Come Memorial Day weekend, we will have lived in this house four years.

It was supposed to be temporary. “You’ll have NO PROBLEM selling it,” Real Estate Agent Aunt-in-Law assured us.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Ha.

So I didn’t really try to get comfortable. I’ve talked extensively about my Stuff Aversion, so I won’t bother weeping about that again, but this past weekend, something REVOLUTIONARY happened.

We hung up some pictures.

I KNOW. Two WHOLE pictures, in the dining room. And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like a whole different room in there. Like an actual room and not just another Institution-Beige Walled-Off Environment.

(Because we haven’t painted, either. The house was “move-in” ready, with fresh beige paint all up looking so pretty that we didn’t bother messing with it. Because we wanted to sell in two or three years! Let’s not paint it wacky colors no one will appreciate! HA AGAIN.)

And those two pictures were my gateway drug to wanting to make the house more HOMEY. It’s like a whole house’s worth of nesting going on up in my head, but with no excuse to eat a bucket of ice cream.

All of this brings me into the most glaring problem of my entire existence, which is that I have absolutely no sense of style. I wear jeans. Plain-ish tops. Flip-flops or sneakers. Ponytail. Glasses.

Basically, I’m the BEFORE in all those movies where they take the Awkward Girl and turn her into Awesome Girl within about 90 minutes, give or take a few Sixpence None the Richer songs or however regular people measure these things.

The DECOR of my home is a reflection of this. I gave up after cream, taupe, off-white, and BLEH — but whatever colors you can think of that basically mean BEIGE, those are the colors of everything in my house.

So what the hell do I do? With myself AND my house? I feel like I USED TO have some idea of, like, who I am and all that, but I just don’t know anymore. Which sounds depressing only because it REALLY REALLY IS.

I can’t believe I am WHINING on my BLOG about not having pretty things on my walls. PERSPECTIVE MUCH?

But that’s the reason! Right there! Whenever I start thinking that I hate how this place looks, I convince myself it would be wasteful to do anything about it. That I should just accept how it is as Good Enough and move on to more important things. Like … making dinner? I guess? I really have no idea what I’m getting at here. Other than I know exactly what I’m getting at which is that I need to do something about this house. Because I’m in it ALL THE DAY.

So … uh. How do I get in the interior design mindset? I don’t want anything too crazy, you know? Just a little color, maybe some artwork or cool shelf things. I’ve walked around IKEA and other such home decor stores, but I get overwhelmed and end up coming home with a feather duster and maybe a TRASH CAN. I’m forever seeing cute pictures of cute people’s cute houses and thinking THAT IS SO CUTE I WANT SOMETHING LIKE THAT THING WITH A BIRD ON IT, but I can’t ever picture the things I see in a store or on the internet in my actual house. Should I just start getting little things here and there and amass them in a pile until I sense a theme and can make something happen? Buy a bunch of things at once?

7 responses to “Because I’d really like there to be an AFTER”

Here’s what you do. You go buy some tiny paint samples in any old whatever colors. You put them on the walls. And now! You’re committed! Then you stare at them and ruminate and maybe buy a few more samples once you’ve narrowed down the field to a color family at least and then you go, “For crying out loud it’s just paint and I want to get this the hell over with!” and you pick one and you paint and hey! It’s like a NEW HOUSE!

Alternatively, you could find a pillow or something in a print you like and work off that, but I’m just giving you MY technique. I didn’t say it’s a GOOD technique. What am I, an interior decorator?

That sounds like a FANTASTIC technique. Maybe pillows would be a good way to start. My couches are a bit naked. Would you believe I get INTIMIDATED by the wall of throw pillows at Pier One? Serious information overload.

Oh, I’m so completely lacking in fashion myself. And i do that same thing where I talk myself out of changes with the “more important things” argument. But the new me thinks that surrounding myself with beauty IS important. So…no expert here, but I’m going with slowly collecting things I love and finding places for them. If someday that fits into a “scheme,” great. Until then, at least I’ll have pretty things to look at.

I’m forever NOT buying little things I love, because I don’t have anything that really goes with them. And I feel like just having one little trinket or picture on the wall is going to look stupid, so I talk myself out it. Then later I see something else that would have gone with the first thing, but I didn’t BUY the first thing, so I talk myself out of THAT TOO.

It’s stupid, is what it is, and next time, I will buy the thing! Because Deb from the Internet said so! Thank you. 🙂

I’ve so done that! But now I buy the thing and instead of hanging it all alone on the wall, I just set it somewhere and look at it from time to time to be happy. Then when I’ve got a good pile, I figure out what to do with it. Of course, sometimes this takes months and is completely weird. But that sort of fits, too.

I am a little obsessed with decorating my house. It is just my kind of fun. You do what Deb (my sister-in-law by the way – HA!) said: you buy whatever you like. Eventually, the stuff you love will have a theme and that theme will be Stuff Diane Thinks Is Cool and you will be so happy you live in a house with such an awesome theme. I shop at thrift stores a lot but also Urban Outfitters has cheap fun stuff from time to time (I only buy it on sale because I am poor like that) and I also read blogs and websites that inspire me. Um, so I guess my advice is to buy all the stuff you like and don’t worry if it matches. Matching sucks. Pretty stuff you like is good.